


if i could stand up mean for all the things that i believe

by paperclipbitch



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Disabled Character, Community: Towerparty, Friendship, Gen, Handwaving, Multi, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 06:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4736609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern college AU.  The rebuilding of Daniel Sousa.</p><p>[Angie adds: “we have so much vodka.  <i>So much</i>.  Come join us, Morose Dude Across The Hall.”]</p>
            </blockquote>





	if i could stand up mean for all the things that i believe

**Author's Note:**

> [Title from _L.E.S. Artistes_ by Santogold, because I'm listening to it right now?] Written for the speed challenge **towerparty** , where you get 24 hours to write a Marvel fic once you've been tagged; my prompt was: _I'm a caged-bird, I'm on fire/Got these paper wings, but they don't hold the air_. God knows how I got this from that, but, my intentions were good? And it was meant to be hurt/comfort, which I'm terrible at.
> 
> So: college AU, much handwaving, much vagueness, I have no idea how old anyone is in this, presumably old enough for all the drinking and shagging? Just go with it.

**i.**

“Hey! You! Morose Dude Across The Hall!”

Daniel stops fumbling with his keys and turns, to find the girls in the room opposite his leaning awkwardly around their door. 

“I’m terribly sorry,” the taller, English one says, though her mouth betrays her calm tone, quivering into a smirk. “Angie’s had so much to drink.”

“ _So much_ ,” Angie agrees cheerfully. “Come join us, Morose Dude Across The Hall!”

“We’re so sorry,” English says, “no one’s actually just told us your name.”

Daniel opens his mouth to refuse, the words crowding automatic and easy on his tongue, and Angie adds: “we have so much vodka. _So much_. Come on, Morose Dude Across The Hall.”

“You need to stop calling him that,” English tells Angie softly, and Daniel presses his face into the cool wood of his door for a long moment, and reflects that people have called him a lot worse recently.

“Okay,” he says, stepping back, scraping a worn smile together when he turns around. “I can help you out with the so much vodka.”

“Yay!” Angie responds, stepping back and pulling their door open properly. Daniel swallows, already regretting this, but puts his crutch forward and makes his way into their room.

“I’m Peggy, by the way,” the English girl tells him, holding out a hand; she’s managed not to offer the one opposite the hand clutching his crutch, which is more than most people do.

“Daniel,” he replies; he thinks this might be the longest exchange he’s had with anyone outside of his family, the faculty or the medical profession in maybe months.

“ _Daniel_!” Angie repeats, and punches the air with both fists. She’s sprawled on her bed, curls awry, eyes glittering.

“She just nailed an audition,” Peggy explains in an undertone, going to close the door. “ _Drama majors_.”

Angie kicks her feet and grins, cat-like, at Daniel. 

“Chair or bed?” Peggy asks; Daniel feels himself flush, but nods toward the nearest desk chair. Peggy nods, shifts it for him, and then walks over to where there’s vodka and mugs on the windowsill. “Orange juice, cranberry juice, or flat Coke Zero that neither of us remember buying but which is somehow in our room anyway?”

“Orange,” Daniel says, and watches as Peggy mixes him a drink, liberally splashing in a lot of vodka and what doesn’t look like much orange juice at all. He doesn’t mind; he thinks he could use it.

Peggy hands him his drink and flops onto the bed Angie isn’t on, which is considerably better made and has fewer pillows on it. Peggy’s half of the room is tidier and doesn’t have as many fairylights decorating it, but it still looks cosy, more home-like, than Daniel’s room. A couple of months after moving in, and half his stuff is still in boxes. 

“We wanted to say hello before,” Peggy explains, tucking her legs underneath her with an easy grace that makes Daniel taste bitterness on his tongue. “But you’re a very solitary man, you know.”

Daniel wants to tell her that he doesn’t need their pity, but he _does_. That’s all he has these days: other people’s pity. He smiles, awkward, and takes a sip of his drink. It’s strong, but it’s good. Maybe necessary.

“…yeah,” he says, which doesn’t feel like enough, but he’s forgotten how to talk to people these days.

Angie, adding the dubious Coke Zero to her mug, flicks her gaze to where he’s leant his cane against the desk. “That still pretty new?” she asks. 

Daniel expects to flinch at the question, but he thinks he’s actually just relieved that someone didn’t feel the need to tiptoe around the inevitable curiosity. 

“Yeah,” he says, and he can’t hide the grimace this time, “it’s still pretty new.”

**ii.**

Afterwards, they said that Daniel was lucky to survive, and, yeah, he was. Several cars were in the collision, and two people didn’t make it out; a third is still in a coma. Daniel has no memory of being in the car, no memory of that day at all. He woke up in a hospital after several days of unconsciousness and two lots of emergency surgery; his parents were exhausted-looking and weepy by his bedside, and it was a few more days before Daniel was conscious and lucid long enough to realise that his leg had been amputated.

That was his lacrosse scholarship gone; his life, as he’d planned it, gone. 

It’s a year later; Daniel has bad days and worse days, and periodically better days, less worse days, though he’s still clawing himself back from the ruins. He’s still in physio, working on one day being able to get rid of the crutch, and he’s in therapy though he’s not sure what good it’s doing him. He came back to college, needing something now he doesn’t have a future in sports. There’s no place for him in his old frat house, old team; he tried meeting with the guys he thought of as his friends a few times, but they don’t know what to say to each other now, and he feels each of them wincing, thinking _there but for the grace of god_ when he limps past. 

So Daniel is living in regular dorms, teaching himself how to live with his prosthetic, with relearning himself and his purpose and his wants and needs and life. That’s what his therapist says he should be doing, anyway; he suspects that what he’s actually doing is shutting himself away.

**iii.**

Peggy’s in a blue dress, curls spilling over her shoulder, as she comes running up to him. Daniel thought that maybe Tuesday was it; Peggy and Angie getting him drunk, carrying him back to his room, and tucking him into bed. Their curiosity was satisfied, and they’d know he was currently incapable of having a friendship, communicating with people. And he could go back to being Morose Dude Across The Hall.

But here’s Peggy, sunshine in her hair, a smile on her face, linking her arm through his free one. “Daniel!” she says brightly. “You have classes in the Stark wing, right?”

Daniel’s not even sure he remembers telling Peggy his major, let alone where he’d have classes, but he’s already suspecting that Peggy is the kind of person who just finds things out and then extrapolates. 

“I do,” he allows. He has a lecture in half an hour; it’s not far, but he walks at maybe two-thirds of the speed he used to, and he likes to get into the auditorium early, pick his seat before anyone else gets there so nobody needs to watch him struggling up the steps alone. It’s awkward, and embarrassing, and he wonders if he’ll ever get over that, the sick crowded feeling of everyone looking at him even when they’re not.

“Me too!” Peggy says. “Walk me over?”

“I’ll hold you up,” Daniel warns her.

“I’ve got plenty of time,” Peggy replies cheerfully, and he realises he doesn’t know how to get rid of her politely, without saying things aloud that he can’t bring himself to put into words. “Angie’s started running lines already; I’m pleased for her, but I can’t face prompting her any longer.”

It’s been a while since Daniel did small talk, but he hasn’t forgotten everything. “What part did she get?”

Peggy tells him, bright, and he asks another question and she answers and makes him smile, and before Daniel realises it they’ve talked all the way over to the Stark wing.

The Stark wing is still being built, though it’s got an auditorium and rooms for seminars completed. Howard Stark’s father put up the money to stop the university from kicking his son out, so the rumour goes; Daniel doesn’t know much about Howard Stark, but it sounds legitimate enough. The building’s got elevators too, shiny new ones that actually work. He can take the stairs, but he prefers not to. Too many eyes on him.

“We’re going out Saturday night,” Peggy says softly, squeezing his arm as she lets go. “Me, Angie, our friend Jarvis. A few drinks, nothing too exciting. It’d be great if you could come.”

Daniel wants to tell her that he doesn’t want them to feel like they have to, that he already has plans for Saturday – he doesn’t – that he’s not supposed to drink with the leg – which he did when he was on painkillers, but isn’t an issue now. He’s got a dozen excuses he’s pulled off before, but Peggy’s eyes are sharp and they seem to be looking at _him_ , not at the tired-looking limping guy with the worn grey t-shirt and the crutch he can’t carry off with panache yet. 

“Alright,” he says. “Okay.”

Peggy grins, satisfied, and then spins on her heel and goes to her seminar. Daniel watches her go, and wonders what he’s let himself in for.

**iv.**

The Red Room turns out to be a lesbian bar, though it seems men-friendly enough. Peggy deposits Daniel, Jarvis, and an already happy-tipsy Angie into a booth, and swishes off to where a red-headed bartender is mixing bright-looking cocktails.

“That’s Natasha,” Angie tells him happily. “She’s a goddess.”

“Angie is not wrong,” Jarvis agrees. He’s English, like Peggy, and dresses unbelievably sharply, prefers to be known by his last name and apparently has a wife, though Daniel hasn’t met her yet. “Natasha is… quite a woman.”

“I love her,” Angie says fervently.

“She’s also far out of your league, my dear,” Jarvis tells her, and Angie groans and presses her face into the table. Jarvis pats her back gently.

Peggy comes over, bearing a tray of things covered in cocktail umbrellas. “Natasha says this round is on the house,” she replies, “but everything after that we have to pay for.”

“Did she glare at Angie while she said that, by any chance?” Jarvis enquires mildly, handing the drinks around. 

“ _One time_ ,” Angie protests, picking out her umbrella to twirl it between her fingers. “And it was mostly _That Bitch_ ’s fault anyway.”

Daniel blinks at the sudden change of tone. “Natasha?”

“Dottie.” Angie spits the name. “The Evil Ex.”

Peggy makes a soothing noise, and squeezes Angie’s hand. “That’s why Nat sent us the drinks.”

Jarvis is frowning, while Peggy’s face is bordering on the murderous. Daniel hasn’t really known them all that long, but he can agree with being angry with anyone who hurt Angie’s feelings; she’s noisy and confident and sweet with it, and doesn’t, in Daniel’s opinion at least, deserve any evil exes.

Angie screws up her face, and takes a sip of her cocktail. “How about you, Danny?” she asks. “Any evil exes we can commiserate over?”

“No one evil,” Daniel replies, trying not to think about the fact no one’s called him _Danny_ in months. “And I used to be too busy with practice to have anyone who’d really qualify as a full-blown _ex_.” He takes a sip of his own drink, which is eye-wateringly strong, and wavers, and decides, what the hell. “And, you know, lockerrooms and teams,” he adds. “I wasn’t exactly _in_ , but I wasn’t completely _out_ , either.”

He guesses if you’re going to come out to your new friends, a gay bar is probably the place to do it in.

Angie rolls her eyes. “ _Sports_ , man,” she says. “Did you have to do homoerotic hazing rituals?”

Jarvis chokes on his cocktail.

Daniel smirks. “Angie, _everything_ about sports is homoerotic, hadn’t you noticed?”

Angie crows, and claps her hands. “I _knew_ you’d be fun once we got rid of some of the morose bits.”

Daniel thinks about being offended, but decides that she’s not completely wrong, either. Peggy laughs, and when Daniel looks at her, sees that she’s looking weirdly thoughtful, like cogs he can’t guess at are turning in her head.

**v.**

It’s getting late when the knock comes at Daniel’s door, but now he has friends on his corridor, he’s getting used to people rocking up at late hours; getting used to being able to wander across the hall when he wants. He gets up, grimacing at the stiffness where he’s been sitting in his desk chair too long, and hops over to open the door unaided. Peggy is standing there, looking awkward, twisting the strap of her messenger bag between her fingers.

“Sorry,” she says, “but I was finishing a paper in the library, and I’ve got back to find Angie has beribboned our door.”

“Sorry?” Daniel asks, and Peggy moves so he can see where there’s a big red ribbon tied in an ostentatious bow around the door handle of Angie and Peggy’s room. 

“She says it’s classier than putting a sock on there,” Peggy explains. “Either way, I apparently can’t go back in there just yet; do you mind if I come in?”

Daniel tends to spend more of his time in Angie and Peggy’s room, and he’s a little ashamed of his still-spartan living space, but he moves back so that she can come in. Peggy is Peggy, so she doesn’t say anything about his tidy and impersonal lack of décor; instead, she sits down on the edge of his bed, toeing off her pumps, and nods toward his laptop. “Netflix?”

It’s not until Daniel’s lined up a ridiculous sitcom that neither of them will have to pay too much attention to and shifted onto the bed beside her that he realises it’s the first time he’s been in front of Peggy without his prosthetic. The first time he’s been in front of _anyone_ who isn’t his family or a doctor without his prosthetic, in fact. He startles, and moves abortively toward where his false leg is propped against the nightstand, obvious and stark.

“Daniel,” Peggy says quietly, reaching for his arm and laying her fingers against his wrist. “It’s alright. Don’t worry.”

“But-”

“A good friend of mine lost his arm a few years back,” Peggy adds, still gentle. “If you think I’m going to run screaming from you, then you’ve clearly underestimated me.”

Daniel dips his head and keeps his eyes closed until the urge to cry has mostly passed; when he opens them, the world is still blurry, but canned laughter is brightly spilling from his laptop speakers and Peggy has her head tipped onto his shoulder.

**vi.**

By the third time, they have a routine in place; Daniel’s even mostly gotten used to Peggy sleeping in his bed, hair tickling his nose, good-naturedly getting his elbow in her ribs.

“I’m pretty sure Angie and Colleen are two thirds of the way to dating,” Peggy explains, half past midnight, yawning in her pyjamas on his bed while they watch _Brooklyn 99_ and debate actually going to sleep soon. “That’s why I’m letting her get away with this; if they _don’t_ manage to get their act together, I’m demanding compensation for the both of us.”

“I don’t mind,” Daniel tells her, and mostly means it; he’s realised by now that Peggy and Angie are determined to drag him back toward some kind of an actual life, not the mess he was pretending was one before he really met them, but he’s nonetheless happy to take baby steps. Having Peggy staying in his room periodically is about as a big a step as he wants to take for now; and if they think he hasn’t noticed the way Jarvis, who is apparently preternaturally neat, has been unpacking his boxes and scattering belongings about, then they’re definitely mistaken.

He doesn’t mind; he’s taken down a couple of photographs, changed them for other things, but that’s okay too. He has different friends, a different focus now, and maybe one day he’ll be able to think about running without his throat catching tight.

“Were you always this accommodating?” Peggy asks, raising an amused eyebrow.

“No,” Daniel replies. “But I’m rooting for Angie and Colleen too.”

Peggy laughs. Daniel’s about to suggest that they get some sleep, when a voice from somewhere in the hall outside yells: “ _Carter_!”

“Oh, bloody hell,” Peggy sighs, pushing herself off the bed. “Sorry for whatever’s about to ensue, Daniel.”

She heads for the door, leaving Daniel to debate his options before he tugs on a sweater and grabs the crutch so he can navigate after her more easily. 

“Hello, Thompson,” Peggy is saying dryly when Daniel rejoins her. “I presume your mixer went terribly well.”

Thompson is a tall blonde guy who looks vaguely familiar; Daniel thinks he saw him around the gym a few times, back when he still wanted to actually go there. He’s dishevelled and drunk, messy hair falling into his eyes. 

“Gonna let me in, Carter?” he asks, and then seems to notice Angie’s red ribbon on the door handle. “Oh, hey, no.” He raises his voice, knocks a fist against the doorframe. “It’d better not be That Bitch, Angie!”

“It’s not!” Angie yells back, messy and far too loud.

“For God’s sake,” Peggy mutters, grabbing Thompson’s arm and manhandling him into Daniel’s room. Daniel’s not sure how he feels about this turn of events, but they probably shouldn’t stay out here shouting all night; it’ll only result in people complaining.

“Hey, how’d you get a single, Carter?” Thompson asks, as Peggy pushes him into Daniel’s desk chair. Thompson sways vaguely, but manages to look like he isn’t about to slip to the floor any time soon. 

“It’s not hers, it’s mine,” Daniel interrupts, deciding that he should probably stake his claim to this place at some point. Peggy sends him a swiftly apologetic look.

Thompson squints at him, and Daniel abruptly remembers watching Thompson weight training, arms bared and slick with sweat and skin straining over the muscles underneath. It’s abrupt and a memory he wasn’t aware he had, and he swallows, too hard, looking away from the sharp bright glint of Thompson’s eyes.

“Oh, hey,” Thompson says, and at least his voice has dropped to an acceptable inside level. “You’re um, that guy, um, Sousa. Lacrosse, right? And then there was that drunk driver. I didn’t know you were back.”

Daniel blinks a few times, because he wasn’t aware that anyone outside of his team had really registered his presence at the university; he looks to Peggy, who looks outright startled.

“Yeah,” Daniel manages, throat dry, “that was me.”

“You were good,” Thompson says, and then yawns elaborately. “Everyone’s an asshole, Carter.”

“Well, you would know,” Peggy says, but her voice is gentle. “Any reason you’re gracing my night with your presence?”

“ _Assholes_ ,” Thompson repeats, groggy, and says nothing else.

Peggy pushes her hair away from her face and knots her fingers briefly in it. “I’m so sorry, Daniel,” she says. “I think I’ll need to go and tell Angie that she’s going to have to curtail her shagging, and maybe we’ll be able to drag him into my room?”

It’s weird sometimes, Daniel reflects, hanging out with Brits. It’s probably easiest to think about that, the words that Jarvis and Peggy use casually like they’re straight out of a period drama, than about Jack Thompson, star sprinter, half-conscious and dressed in clingy jeans in his room. Daniel doesn’t know what to do with that part of his night.

“He doesn’t look like he wants to be dragged anywhere,” Daniel manages.

Thompson raises his head at the sound of Daniel’s voice, cracking open one brilliant blue eye. He’s got a bruise rising on his cheek, harsh and stark, and he looks like he’s had a hell of a night. Daniel’s pretty good at conflict resolution, but he can recognise when a guy’s been punched in the face easily enough.

“Wanna let me crash in your bed, Sousa?” he asks, and then winces, looks away again. 

_Huh_ , Daniel thinks. 

“Go ahead,” he says, and watches as Thompson essentially keels over sideways, rolling onto the covers and flopping to a standstill.

“Well,” Peggy says after a long moment, voice crisp and bright. “I must apologise for my choice of friends, Daniel, who have given us nowhere to sleep tonight.”

“I’ve got no morning classes,” Daniel hears him telling her, “how’re you going to keep us busy, Peggy?”

She turns a relieved grin on him, and Daniel finds he doesn’t mind any of this as much as he would’ve thought he would.

**vii.**

After Daniel and Peggy have invaded Jarvis and Anna’s incredibly small apartment, made them have an all-night superhero movie night, eaten all of their microwave popcorn, and crashed out on their couch, Daniel staggers back to his room mid-afternoon. He wants a long sleep on something actually comfortable, and then a shower, and then maybe he’ll think about some of his reading or assignments for the week.

He enters his room again with a slight sense of trepidation, but it’s perfectly tidy. The sheets have been changed, the old ones shoved into his laundry hamper, and there’s no sign that anybody else was ever there.

Daniel shucks his shoes and pants and leg, collapsing onto the covers in his t-shirt and boxers, and decides to think this all over when he’s capable of stringing trains of thought together.

And, hey, it’s one way to get Jack Thompson into his bed, he muses briefly before crushing that thought as fast as he can.

The next morning, he’s about to head out to classes when he almost runs into someone walking up the hall.

“Whoa, guy,” he says, and: “hey, Sousa, just who I was looking for.”

Jack Thompson, blonde and tidy-haired, freshly-shaved, smelling of his morning shower. He’s got a brilliant purple bruised ring around his left eye, stark and harsh against his skin, and Daniel wonders again how he got it; feels the words catch in his mouth, and knows that now is not the time to ask.

Thompson’s smile on seeing him is broad but a little sheepish at the corners, and he presses a large cardboard cup at Daniel. “I, uh, asked Carter how you like it. Y’know, for the other night.”

Daniel blinks at the coffee, which is actually just what he wanted right now, and then looks back up at Thompson. “Thanks,” he says, and hopes he doesn’t sound as stunned as he feels.

“I can be a jackass,” Thompson says, shrugging, not quite looking at him, “but I try and make up for it.”

“It’s fine,” Daniel tells him. “We’ve all been there, you know?”

He has no idea what he’s talking about, he really never has, but it makes Thompson grin, anyway. “I owe you dinner or something, anyway, it wasn’t cool to take over your room like that. I’ll get your number from Carter, okay? We can sort something out after training sometime this week. See you around, Sousa.”

And then he’s gone, moving at just below a sprint.

Daniel stares after him, and then takes a sip of his coffee. It’s hot, and definitely the way that he likes it.

“Okay,” he says.

“I thought he was going to a weird number of lacrosse games last year,” Angie says, from behind him; Daniel doesn’t jump, but it’s a close thing. “I thought he was just obsessively sporty or something.”

Daniel decides not to think about that right now, because he’s not sure that he can.

“I still don’t know how you guys know him,” he says instead.

“Pretty sure Jackass Thompson is penance for a bad deed Peggy hasn’t done yet,” Angie responds, rolling her eyes, “though that’s not how she tells it.”

That doesn’t actually answer Daniel’s question, but he’s pretty used to that from Angie by now.

“What am I then?” Daniel asks, following her down the hall, careful not to spill his coffee. He can navigate his crutch and the cup, just about, but he should probably stop skipping physio sessions; at first, it was to brood; now, he’s more likely to be doing something irresponsible with Angie and whoever else she’s rounded up.

“You’re our reward,” Angie responds, cheerful and honest, and leads him out into the sunshine.

**Author's Note:**

> Tbh, I just want to write a bunch of Thompson/Sousa porn, no idea how I did 4k of this instead. Ha. May have to make a sequel happen one day.


End file.
